On Tuesday, 22 November at 20:25 UT, ESA’s tracking station at Perth, Australia, established contact with Russia’s Phobos-Grunt spacecraft. This was the first signal received on Earth since the Mars mission was launched on 8 November. ESA teams are working closely with engineers in Russia to determine how best to maintain communications with the spacecraft. More news will follow later.

For a long period, Russian space officials remained silent, and the only news on the fate of the spacecraft came from other space agencies, amateur astronomers and leaks from individuals within the Russian space industry.

That might be a bit of a stretch — after all, no one is sure what the problem is; whether it’s a software glitch or complete hardware failure. There is no way to know if communications will continue, or whether the Perth ground station was lucky.

But one thing is for certain, something is ticking inside the onboard electronics of Phobos-Grunt, perhaps it’s the leverage Russian engineers need to gain access and correct the problem.